Maintaining intimate relationships with your closest ally

Thank you to an undercover trooper for this anonymous guest post.

Since having children my husband and I have been really struggling to keep up with our more intimate duties to each other and sometimes it does feel like a duty after spending a day running round after 2yo and having been up every two hours of the night with six month old. The last thing on my mind has been sex! And in fairness, hubby has been really patient with me and let me come to him when I’m ready. He’s really good like that, but it has been causing problems. And a lot of frustration for the both of us. Mismatched sex drives are bad!

So we’ve been talking for a while about how we can maintain our passion for each other despite the fact that we have two children and a cat that likes to get in the way! I think she doesn’t want any more screaming babies and toddlers! We’ve thought about a lot of things to help get me more involved.

Role Play: This was a bad idea because I kept laughing! He showed me nurses outfits. You know the ones I mean! And I just found them funny! Probably because I had a conversation with my mother about buying underwear for hubby and I stressed that it was dignified and her response was that she wears undignified things for my father. A mental picture of my mother in a sexy nurses outfit really put me off the thought of role play!

Mutual Massage: This was good, but it really got boring after a while, if you know what I mean! Although someone I spoke to in confidence about this suggested I buy a vibrator that we can use while playing.

Having Sex In Different Places: This we’ve done a lot! In fact 6mth old was conceived in my brother in law’s bed (Fact!) I think it’s just the idea that we might get caught that really turns me on!

Good Old Fashion Romance: You know what I mean! Candlelit Chinese, a bottle of wine, nice music... And then the baby wakes up for a feed. Yeah! That! Really annoying! Though now we’re bottle feeding, we can now farm the kids off somewhere and have a proper date night!

Today though, our desire to keep the passion reached a new level! We left the children at hubby’s parent’s house because they were both asleep and went for a walk. We weren’t planning on being intimate, we just wanted to spend some time together alone! We really just wanted to sit and talk and enjoy each other’s company. Well, we were sat on the bench talking and laughing and kissing. Let’s just say one thing led to another and we ended up in an empty field doing slightly more than playing! It was so much fun!!! I really enjoyed it anyway and I haven’t really enjoyed anything like that with hubby since we had the baby. Having post natal depression hasn’t really helped though. But it’s really reinvigorated my desire for hubby! And I’ve had a naughty smile on my face all afternoon!

If nothing else that’s got to be one more item ticked off the bucket list!

Is there anything else we can do to keep up our passion and intimacy do you think? What have you done?

Why I made a pig cake

A while ago, I was having a standard bad day, nothing important just one of those days when I was feeling fed up and needing a good night out. Everything had just got too much for me I suppose. Hubby came home from work and must have noticed I was in a major grump. I'm not one of those people who is good at keeping up a front, not at home at any rate.  In passing, while I was struggling to serve dinner and get the children to stop throwing my best cutlery on the floor and use it to practise fencing each other, he said that at his work they were doing a cake baking competition.

Now this was interesting enough to get me to stop for a moment, wipe my sweating brow and look at him in confusion. His work is a very male dominated, testosterone filled environment.

"What, you're all going to bake cakes?" I asked. 

"Erm...no," he replied at this point, he had the sense to look a little shifty. "No, it's the wives and girlfriends who make the cakes, then we'll bring them in, eat them and decide which is best."

"What!" I screeched, dropping a small child to the floor in horror.

"You don't have to do it, it's ok."

I think I was struck dumb for about half an hour. I could not believe he had even mentioned it. What had happened to my life? The thing which surprised me was that he wasn't shocked by the idea. He's a pretty modern guy. Before I had children, I earned more than him and he never had a problem with it, he does his share of childcare and even some housework. How could he possibly think that expecting your wives to take part in a baking context for your entertainment is a good idea? 

It's not the baking part which upset me. If he's asked me to bake something for his birthday to take in, or because they had been working hard I would have. I enjoy baking so that's not a problem. It was the competition element which upset me. What next a swimwear competition? 

So I thought long and hard and then had a genius idea. The only cake I could make in such a situation was shaped like a pig. I had great fun making it with my eldest daughter, it's not the prettiest cake in the world but it was good enough. He did chuckle when he saw it and then shook his head. There was no way he was going to take it in. Oh well we enjoyed eating it.

So what happened next? I would like to say that I stuck to my guns and didn't make another cake. I certainly thought about it. In the end I realised that I love him, I love baking. I don't want him to be the only one not to take in a cake, what was the point? So despite feeling like I was in The Taming Of the Shrew. I baked him a carrot cake and packed it up and sent it in.

A few days later I couldn't help myself. "So which cake was best?" I asked.

"Oh Mrs A's triple layer chocolate cheese cake," he replied. 

So the moral of this story? If you're going to force your wife to take part in a completely unnecessary sexist bake off, at least have the decency to lie to her and say hers was the best. Would that have made me feel better? Probably.